It's a beautiful, bright, birdsongy morning, a new week. Lots to do:
*Begin on this MFA thesis, which I set aside last week so I could finish five Sun essays on deadline.
*Write some more Sun essays, but at a more leisurely pace.
*Look at the Able Muse slushpile.
*Work on some poems to send to an editor who solicited work.
*Send my poetry MS to the publisher.
*Maybe some research for the novel.
*Stay largely off social media, because there be time's sinkhole.
*Go for some good walks with Dora in the sunshine.
Waiting for my Grandma's Secret to arrive, so that I can treat these stains on my Willow. I am flummoxed, really. No idea where they came from. I don't think I was cooking that messily or greasily, although I didn't wear an apron, and I should have.
But I'm not going to obsess about that right now. Instead, I'm going to tally up my reading for the year to date:
Novels
Offshore, Penelope Fitzgerald
Aiding and Abetting, Muriel Spark
Hard Times, Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby, Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens (in progress)
Short Stories
You Want More, George Singleton (in progress)
Nonfiction
The Reaper Essays, Jarman & McDowell
The Making of Poetry, Adam Nicolson (in progress)
Understanding Poetry, Brooks & Warren (in progress)
Poetry
Various, always in progress. One factoid I acquired last week in writing essays for the Sun: Cavalier poet Sir John Suckling was the inventor of cribbage.
Bible and Spiritual Reading
Numbers
Psalms in the 60s
Mark's Gospel
Imitation of Christ Book 3
Wearing today:
Sierra it is today, over my old thrifted J.Jill ramie-blend sweater, for a change of pace. I don't normally wear that sweater as an under-layer, but why not? It's really thin enough to be a tee. Navy cotton-blend leggings, which have been airing out for several days but not washed --- we'll see how well they hold their shape today. Boody bamboo socks, Birkenstock hiking boots which I'm continuing to break in.
I like the colors together here. Three is always a good number as a touchstone for anything aesthetic: the rule of thirds, a triad of colors. What I have going on in this outfit is the triad of gray, pink, and blue, although obviously colors in the outfit can go up and down the scale of any of those. My socks aren't the same blue as my leggings, but they're in that family: variation, but within that limit. I've always loved the color of this sweater, which touches the line between pink and purple, as a kind of orchid color, I guess? Or soft grape? Or . . . [your favorite pinky-purple flower here]. Anyway, although I've often found this sweater difficult to style, I've hung onto it because the color always made me feel so good. And now I'm glad I've kept it, because with my wool dresses I find myriad ways to style it.
So this is an outfit that's definitely not fashionable --- at this point, I don't even know what's fashionable. But it is very much my style. I love the simple line of an A-line jumper: vaguely nunnish, but not really. And I'm kind of in love with hiking boots with a dress. These, at least, feel like the right balance of chunky/utilitarian with just nice leather boots to wear. My husband thinks I look cute and woolly. Or at least, he knows the right things to say.
His new Wool&Prince shirt has finally arrived, by the way --- I'd given him a blue Oxford-type button-down shirt for Christmas, but a large was too big. We were slow getting it into the mail to return, but once we did, Wool&Prince activated the process quickly, and his replacement shirt, a medium, turned up promptly. He's delighted with it, and especially delighted that after years in extra-large, he can wear a medium. This is a result of calorie counting (yes, really, at the end of the day, what makes a difference really is your ratio of calories in to calories out) and weights several times a week. He has lost a huge amount of belly fat and gained lean muscle mass, all of which is good news for his overall health. Anyway, he was excited that the medium shirt fit him, and I hope he'll get a lot of wear out of it.
He won't wear the same shirt every day, but he has worn last year's wool button-down a lot, and it looks brand-new. I think he's washed it once in the year he's had it. What prompted me, really, to look into wool shirts for him, was his continual complaint that nobody makes good men's dress shirts anymore. Even traditionally good brands like Brooks Brothers had declined in quality, so that any shirt he wore a lot (expensive, so it wasn't like he could buy a new nice shirt for every weekday, all at once) fell apart a lot faster than he could afford to replace it with same. My goal is to keep adding these button shirts for him, so that he has a week's worth of good shirts to wear to work. He is one of those rare people who really do wear a coat and tie almost every day, and he appreciates a good dress shirt. The only thing I won't be able to do is provide a white wool button-down, because they just really can't achieve that crisp white of a cotton shirt. But if he only has to replace a white shirt more often, and if he has to replace it less often because he's wearing more durable wool dress shirts most of the time, then that seems like a win.
Meanwhile, he appreciates the excellent tailoring of these button shirts. In every way, they are what he's been looking for for years, and I'm glad to have given him two of them. I have my eye on a blue pinstripe for his next one, because he does wear blue pinstripe a lot --- that was what I'd wanted to get him for Christmas, but they were out of his size. I think next time I get paid, I might try to get him one. To have three shirts for a five-day work week would be perfect, really. And he also has two merino undershirts to rotate, which is all to the good. Slowly, slowly, converting the man.
Anyway, I'd better get on with my day. Much to do!
Morning face, showcasing these colors that I love. Also welcoming the silver hair that seems to be growing in apace --- I've been losing a lot of hair every time I shampoo (or feels like it, anyway, although when you have long hair, any hair that falls out feels like a lot), but there's a lot of regrowth at my hairline, all silver. I don't mind that at all. It's interesting to note changes over time. Eventually, I guess, my entire head of hair will recolor itself, and I'll look completely different, and that will be interesting.
OK, enough rumination. Let's get to it.
LATER:
Walked the dog for about an hour, and when I got home, my Grandma's Secret had arrived, so I treated Willow and re-washed her again. I haven't taken pictures of these stains, because they're pretty boring, just your garden-variety mysterious grease stains. HOW so many of them wound up on this dress is still certainly a mystery to me, but anyway. There they were. But I am hopeful. In any event, whatever the outcome of this last wash, this is probably as good as it's going to get, so I am just going to wear my dress from henceforth (but also an apron).
EVEN LATER:
Willow almost dry. A couple of spots left that I missed earlier, but Grandma for the win. I'm going to wear Willow tomorrow, then spot-clean her again, but I think we're in the clear.
Meanwhile, I have read poems in the magazine slushpile and ten pages of the novel MS I'm reading for an MFA student. And worked a little on something of my own.
My husband is fasting for the next three days for a particular prayer intention, and is also out this evening at a County Council rezoning hearing, so dinner will be pretty simple. I sliced the pork loin I made on Saturday to freeze in its own pan juices --- I'll pull the slices out for lunches once the man is taking nourishment again. I think I'll cook a couple of Italian sausages for myself tonight and call it good. And watch some (Joan Hickson) Miss Marple. The newer version is awful, but this old series from the 90s, with Hickson: excellent, even for somebody who never felt very strongly about Miss Marple one way or the other.
Also still furiously reading Our Mutual Friend. The plot was thick to begin with; now it's thicker.